That word kept popping up in my head throughout “Almost, Maine”: Almost profound. Almost all the way home. Almost.

John Cariani’s whimsical take on love in the loneliest corner of the country is a series of nine vignettes that, depending on your sensibilities, will fall somewhere between enchanting and “are you kidding me?” on your personal poignancy meter.

Think of these melancholy and magical romantic scenes as a “sketch rom-edy.” The play is structured like any sketch comedy, only these deceptively simple tales are made to touch your heart. Thanks to Aurora Fox director Bev Newcomb Madden and a first-rate cast, they sometimes do. Sometimes, they become weighed down by repetition and cloying sentiment. Sometimes, the premises are too outrageous to have much impact.

Our setting is a tiny town called Almost, and yes, it’s in rural Maine, “the only place in the country where ‘down south’ means Vermont.” It’s a place where people are sparse and isolated, making the chance for real human connections that much more remote.

Robert Michael is our musical narrator, threading each scene with a doleful, dulcet harmonica that subs for Cupid’s arrow. As the night progresses, he slowly orbits the stage like a moon.

We open under a vast night sky so brilliant and serene it could be a cartoon. A couple sit with their backs to the audience. Snuggling Ginette has never felt closer to Pete. But as Pete sees it, these two could not be further away from one other – the diameter of the globe.

The best tale starts unlikely and turns heartbreaking – literally. Glory (Brown) is squatting on East’s (Arp) farm. She’s here for the best view of the Northern Lights, which she calls “the torches the recently departed carry with them so they can find their way to heaven.” She’s mourning a dead husband who broke her heart, which has turned to shards of slate she carries with her.

This element of magical realism recurs throughout, though that’s overstating things. It’s more that Cariani turns common literal expressions into smart visual stage puns. A character waits for the other shoe to drop – and a shoe drops from the sky. A woman confronts an ex to return all the love he’s ever given her – so she deposits enormous sacks in his living room. One manly man keeps admitting he’s “fallen” for another – and each time he says it, the actor falls.

Cariani, nominated for a 2004 Tony Award playing Motel the tailor in “Fiddler on the Roof,” employs plenty of devices in his first playwriting effort. Four times characters offer up bold and inappropriate smooches to strangers – a sure sign he’s run out of words. By the middle of Act II, the premise has run its course.

But this is the kind of a regional play Aurora Fox audiences have come to love because they tell accessible stories of ordinary people. This one is reminiscent of Buntport Theater’s recent “Winter in Graupel Bay,” which offered two dozen quirky small-town characters on one winter’s night – though this less ambitious effort delivers more emotional impact.

Big-city critics scorched “Almost, Maine,” but it’s a refreshing respite from edgier fare, a perfectly nice night of theater. That’s the M.O. of the busiest woman director in Colorado theater history: No one does nice like Bev Newcomb Madden. No one else comes almost close.